1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to recording apparatuses that include a recording unit and an opening/closing member which is disposed on an upper side of the recording unit and is capable of opening and closing the upper side of the recording unit.
In this application, recording apparatuses include various kinds of apparatuses such as ink jet printers, copy machines, fax machines, and so on.
2. Related Art
Ink jet printers are an example of recording apparatuses. Of the ink jet printers, there is provided such a printer that has a scanning function in addition to a printing function (JP-A-2012-109703). An ink jet printer having the stated scanning function is called a complex machine. This complex machine is capable of reading documents and recording on paper by itself, which enhances convenience of a user and save the installation space as a whole.
In this ink jet printer, a scanner unit is provided on a printer unit, which is a main apparatus body, in a freely rotatable manner with respect to the printer unit about a rotational shaft as a fulcrum disposed at a rear end portion of the scanner unit.
The scanner unit includes an upper frame serving as a housing, an image reading section accommodated in the upper frame, an upper lid that is supported in a freely rotatable manner on the upper frame, and a document placement plate that faces the upper lid when the upper lid is closed. In the scanner unit, a document is placed on the document placement plate and the placed document can be read by the image reading section that is moved along a guide shaft provided in the scanner unit.
Note that an ink jet printer including the above scanner unit has a structure in which the scanner unit is provided on the printer unit. This structure has caused an increase in height of a recording apparatus to make the recording apparatus larger in size.
Further, in a recording apparatus such as an ink jet printer including an ink cartridge, the amount of ink held in the ink cartridge which is detachably disposed in the main apparatus body is limited. Accordingly, in this ink jet printer, there is a risk that the number of operations to exchange the ink cartridge will be increased if recording is performed on a large amount of target recording media.
Therefore, among the recording apparatuses equipped with carriages, there is such a recording apparatus that includes an ink supply system in which an ink tube connected with the carriage side is also connected with a large-capacity ink tank disposed outside the main apparatus body so as to supply ink from the large-capacity ink tank to the carriage side, thereby making it possible to perform recording on a large amount of target recording media (JP-A-2008-238787).
In a recording apparatus including such ink supply system, it is necessary to extend an ink tube connected with a carriage from a printer housing to the outside of the stated housing and to connect the extended ink tube with a large-capacity ink tank. Accordingly, it has been necessary to form a space through which the ink tube passes in the housing so as to extend the ink tube from the housing to the outside of the housing. This increases the height of the housing due to the space being formed, and the recording apparatus is likely to become larger in size.